|
ring sling with overlapping pleat shoulder
New ordering system is now in place. Please click the link and read before ordering!
Remaining points for in-stock slings:
New ordering system -- or -- keeping Jan sane
How is this going to work?
Tips:
• Weekends and Mondays seem to be my busiest ordering days -- I tend to
get the most on Mondays, probably because that's when folks have access to their
work computers and fast connections :) So I'm most likely to run out of points
on the weekend and Monday.
• Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the least busy -- today, for example,
is a Wednesday, and I've had only one order of three available. If you find that
you can't place an order on Monday, try waiting a day or two, and it's very likely
to go through.
• I usually add more points between 8-10 pm Eastern time (12-2am GMT, 7-9
Central, 6-8 Mountain, 5-7 Pacific) on the date specified, so times just after
that will be the best ordering opportunity.
• If you find that, several days in a row, you're simply unable to order,
please email me and I will arrange something for you. I don't want this system
to preclude people from ordering at all, just slow the rate of orders. Why I am doing this:
While I try to maintain a professional appearance
on the web and in my sewing, the truth is, there's only one of me. I do all the
sewing, the web upkeep, the shipping, the accounting... in short, I am sleeping
baby productions. This worked fine until about the beginning of this year, and
then, for whatever reason, I got a lot more popular than I had been before! Word
of mouth, positive reviews, and a lot of press on The
BabyWearer all meant that more and more people were coming to SBP looking
for a sling. That's great for business, and I was very happy to have the extra
income (especially since I could donate a lot more to charity!)
but at the same time, it was putting a lot of extra stress on me and my family.
Last year at this time, I had about 40 orders in a month. Now
I'm up to 90-100 per month, and as it turns out, that's just too many. I found
myself telling the kids far too many times, "No, I'm sorry, we can't go
to the park today -- Mommy has too much work to do," and spending the evenings
sewing and replying to emails instead of spending time reading to and playing
with my children. My work-at-home job had turned into a work-24-hours-a-day job,
and I'm not happy with that.
This is a pretty common phenomenon with WAHMs. Their product gets popular,
and suddenly they're faced with a big decision: what takes precedence, the business
or the family? And if the answer is 'the family' (as most of us would choose!),
then what happens to the business? A lot of WAHMs, when they get to this point,
start to hire help, whether it's someone to sew for them, someone to take on
the millions of tiny tasks that add up to a lot of time (packaging, getting things
printed, web stuff, etc), or someone to take care of the house and/or kids while
they concentrate on the business. Of course, all of that costs money -- a lot
of money, if you're paying your new employee a living wage -- and that money
has to come from somewhere: the price of the product has to go up.
Now, in my particular niche (slings sewn to order), I don't really want to
hand off the sewing to someone else; I like sewing (in moderation) and prefer
to have 100% control over the finished product. I haven't priced my slings such
that I can afford to hire extra help, either -- I'm guessing I'd have to raise
prices at least 50% to cover that kind of help, and here's the kicker: I don't
want to raise my prices. I like being able to provide a quality, comfortable
sling to parents who would otherwise not be able to afford them. At the same
time, I don't want to go to a presewn, in-stock system -- partially because there's
no way to provide all the various combinations possible (6 lengths times goodness
knows how many fabrics times two kinds of rings times five accessories equals...
too many slings to keep in stock!) and besides, I can't see myself keeping up
with demand by doing an in stock system anyway.
The only other alternative seems to me to be some kind of bottleneck for ordering.
I thought about offering sort of a slot system, where each day I would offer
some number of slots, but that didn't seem like it would be enough, since a sling
with all the accessories takes me a lot longer to sew than a plain sling. I don't
want to start a waiting list, because that's what May turned into,
and the only way I got caught up was by closing the store -- I hate doing that,
and I hate having 20 slings hanging over my head -- feels like homework I've
left to the last minute, and I find that extremely stressful! So,
this is what I'm going to do.
How this is going to work:
1. The evening before a sewing day, I assess
what's going on in my life, and figure out how many hours of sewing I can do
without getting stressed.
2. I go into my shopping cart control panel and assign that days' worth of
points to an option that will be attached to each time-consuming product or accessory
(so the DVD will not have the option, since all I have to do is stuff it into
an envelope, but slings and accessories will each have the option). The options
for "Are you paying by..." are as follows:
- PayPal adds the points to your order (and subtracts them from
the available total). This is the one to use if you are paying by PayPal and
are ordering an in-stock fabric sling (i.e. everything but custom slings, sling/wrap
redos, backordered fabrics, like Solarveil, and slings with custom accents).
- Check/Money Order bypasses the points system (since check or
money orders will be sewn when payment arrives, not when the order is put through).
I'll manually remove a point from those available when the payment arrives.
- The third option, PayPal, but sending fabric/sling/wrap, is
for people who are paying right away, but are sending fabric for a custom sling,
or a sling or wrap to be redone, and whose order won't take up space in my sewing
queue that day. This also applies to fabrics that are backordered, like beige
Solarveil is right now.
3. Customers (hopefully not too frustrated by the change!) come to the site
and add things to their cart. The more accessories that are added, the more points
the order takes up (because more accessories equals more time spent sewing).
You can check the number of points allotted per day (and the time at which I
expect to refresh them) at the top of each page.
4. Customers who order soon after the points have been added to the site (which
will probably be in the morning, but may also be the evening before) will have
the best chance of getting their order in that day.
5. Customers who order after all the points have been taken will receive an
error message from the cart -- something along the lines of "I'm sorry,
that particular option is currently out of stock."
That means I've gotten all the orders I have time for that day; in that case,
I'd recommend coming back a few hours later or the next day, or, if this is truly
your only chance to order, send
me an email and I will try to accomodate you. The number of points remaining
is shown at the top of the screen, so you'll be able to check before going through
the cart.
6. Customers whose orders have gone through will have their orders sewn that
day (or the next Monday, if the order is received on a weekend), and they will
be sent out that day or the next. You can always check your order's status here.
7. Customers who order by check or money order will have their slings sewn
and sent when payment is received.
If you still have any questions, please email me at info@sleepingbaby.net and
I'll do my best to help. I hope this isn't too frustrating -- I just can't think
of another way (besides the horrible waiting list) to fairly serve those who
would like to order from me, while still maintaining a healthy, productive family
life. I hope you'll understand :)
|
|
